The police want to look the other way for reasons of time, money and competition for resources — and they believe that they will get more and better results spending the money hunting easier-to-catch criminals.
Stansfeld says that the case took more than six years to bring to court — although he diplomatically does not point out that this was, at least in part, because HBOS refused to co-operate for years — it involved 151 police officers and staff, and the overall cost to be borne by the householders of Thames Valley was in excess of £7 million. That would totally wipe out a lot of local police budgets.
The point about fraud is that it is a national issue. It may happen locally but the whole country has an interest in having honest banks, honest business and honest public officials, and the whole country benefits from attempts to bring wrongdoers to justice.
Astonishingly, however, there is no central fund or mechanism to reimburse the police for the costs incurred, even with successful prosecution like this in the highest court in the land.
Furthermore, it is estimated that the cost for fraud and cybercrime in the UK is now running at close to £200 billion a year, yet the entire budget of the Serious Fraud Office is a derisory £44 million — and the City of London Police, which also investigates fraud, has even less.
It should not be necessary for local police forces to take on cases of this size and complexity, because they are totally ill-equipped to do it.
Fraudsters know this and the more sophisticated increasingly understand that, even if they are caught, they are likely to get away with it.
As a result, fraud is already the largest financial crime in the UK and increasingly the crime of choice for intelligent criminals.
There is, however, a solution — or rather, there are two. The least satisfactory would be for the creation of a central fund that would be used to reimburse local forces for the costs of investigating any major frauds which occur on their patch.
There would be no more turning a blind eye — the objective has to be that every major incident is investigated.
This, however, would be very much the second-best solution because it still leaves the burden in the wrong place.
What is really needed, and what Stansfeld is believed to have been lobbying for in Downing Street, is the creation of a national fraud investigation service.
This would be set up and financed to a level — £1 billion has been mooted — which would match the seriousness of the challenge.
What Government might make of this remains to be seen. But if the criteria are value for money and benefit to society, the spending of £1 billion a year to try to make a dent in £200 billion a year of fraudulent activity seems like a good investment.
